The Necessary Emptiness Before a Change

Lately, I’ve been aware of a particular kind of fatigue. It’s not the sharp exhaustion that comes from a single, difficult event, but the low-grade, pervasive weariness of sustained effort without a pause. It feels like having just finished a long race only to realize you are still on the track, and that stopping isn’t quite allowed yet, even though some deep, quiet part of you is desperate for stillness.

What has been most noticeable is not any one task, but how completely I can become consumed by the sheer volume of what needs to get done. My attention narrows to a pinpoint, my thinking begins to loop, and my mind becomes busy not with insight, but with a relentless hum of obligation. And somewhere in that narrowing, the quieter, more nuanced parts of my inner world simply disappear. There is a temptation to try and name something important in these moments—to find some clean articulation of truth—but the more I grasp for it, the more elusive it becomes. That absence has been frustrating, until I started to notice what might actually be happening.

When a sense of urgency takes over, our capacity for awareness shrinks. This isn’t because we are doing something wrong, but because urgency, by its nature, demands speed. Speed collapses the internal space where reflection, meaning, and self-connection live. When everything feels pressing, the nervous system defaults to prioritizing completion over meaning, and forward motion over a grounded sense of orientation.

This is an especially tricky pattern for people who are capable, responsible, and accustomed to carrying a heavy load. When I get consumed by a task, I have a tendency to disappear into it. Other vital parts of my life go quiet—not through a conscious choice, but as a functional consequence of there being no room left. There is no space to check in, to sense what I might need, or to notice what is being traded away in the relentless pursuit of getting things done.

Intellectually, I know that I do not need to rush. I understand that things will get done in their own time and that nothing catastrophic will happen if a task remains unfinished for a while. But that intellectual knowing has not yet translated into a felt sense of trust in my body. My nervous system still moves as if speed is a requirement for safety, as if slowing down would be an unaffordable risk. This is where the real work of awareness often begins—not at the moment of change, but in the quiet, patient moment of seeing the pattern clearly without yet trying to interrupt it. There is a powerful temptation, especially for those of us who have done a great deal of inner work, to move immediately toward correction. We want to apply the tools we have learned: slow down, reorganize, fix the imbalance. But true awareness asks for something quieter first. It asks us to simply notice what is happening without demanding a different outcome.

Right now, what I am aware of is this: when my pace accelerates, my inner world goes flat. It is not empty, but it is inaccessible. And the frustration I feel about not having something “important” to say may, in fact, be the most important information I have. It may be a direct signal that meaning does not surface on command. It emerges when there is room.

This is not a failure of discipline or a lack of clarity. It is a signal about capacity. The work, then, is not to force spaciousness or to engineer a state of calm. It is to stay with the awareness of the flatness long enough for the body to begin to register what this constant state of urgency truly costs. It is about letting the system feel the subtle grief of its own absence.

For now, that awareness is enough. It is the necessary, often uncomfortable, emptiness that precedes a genuine shift. It is the quiet before the ground softens, before the roots can find water again, and before something new has a chance to grow.